☕️ S&C Daily — The 10 Games Before It Tore

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A new Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine study pulled the game logs of the 19 NBA players who tore an Achilles in a game between 2014 and 2025, after a record seven ruptures in 2024-25 alone. In the 10 games before the tear, those players averaged 29.0 minutes a game against a 27.4 season average. Across 15 games, 28.6 against the same 27.4. Both differences were statistically significant.

The spike is short-term only: season-long minutes and distance run matched each player's own career baseline, and the authors' point is that the pattern lives in the recent window, not the season totals. Experience split the group, with veterans carrying the heaviest loads and younger players rupturing under lighter ones. Their conclusion is that proactive workload management, athlete education and targeted prevention may help protect player health and career longevity.

College basketball insider Ben Stinar reported the New Orleans Pelicans have hired Vijay Blackmon as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. Blackmon played at Indiana in 2018-19. He lands on Jamahl Mosley's staff and will work under Kurt Joseph, who took over as New Orleans' director of strength and conditioning this offseason after the same job at Nebraska.

Illinois needed its new quarterback to lead a locker room that is almost half new players. So the staff changed the lifting schedule. They ran more full-team lifts this spring and summer, putting the whole roster in the room with Katin Houser instead of just the offense.

Coach Bret Bielema says the weight room is where it showed. He told reporters at Big Ten media days that if you ask director of strength and conditioning Tank Wright and the guys in the weight room, Houser's leadership has gone to a different level.

On the Just Fly Performance Podcast, Ryan Paul breaks down how he blends sprint work with high-intent isometrics, plyometrics and force absorption. He has trained more than 8,000 athletes at New Athlete, including 140-plus NFL players.

On testing he is blunt. "When an athlete comes in, I don't care what they squat," he says. He'd rather put an athlete on a force plate and watch a countermovement jump. Plenty of strong guys brake badly there, he says, because they can move a ton of weight but don't know how to handle force. He adjusts daily off readiness data. When he backs off, he cuts volume, not intent.

The Denver Broncos open camp this week in a new $175 million headquarters. Per the AP, the building was designed so players don't burn energy just getting around it. The old setup had them walking across the football fields to lift. All-Pro guard Quinn Meinerz says the weight room now sits essentially connected to the locker room, with the field and the food right there too. "Those little minutes of time do add up throughout the day," he said.

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